


Tales From The 'Pandaverse'

by JadedPandaGirl



Series: Witchy Bussiness [17]
Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Angst, Anthology, F/M, Gen, Mild Language, One Shot, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-09-06 11:33:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16831786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JadedPandaGirl/pseuds/JadedPandaGirl
Summary: So in the wake of Tumblr descending into stupidity once more I felt that it might be better to have a safe place to store a lot of the little stories that have come about from prompts and questions. They get posted here, along with other shorts that I feel can't really stand as stories on their own.If you want, you can throw me a prompt too.





	1. A story about a fall

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt for this one was "The 'I almost lost you' kiss with Dantess."
> 
> Fun fact: It was 5 am when I wrote this.

One of the many problems of being a demon hunter in an urban environment is invariably the structures. It's amazing how big cities are getting, especially vertically. A marvel of mankind's endeavors, really. But when you start getting demons on top of skyscrapers, you will run into some complications. Not so much the fight, but the inevitable moment when you get yourself swan-dived off the side of the building.  
  
Or you chose to do so yourself, if your mind were so inclined.  
  
If you happen to be one of those people whose father just so happened to be an unstoppable force of rebellion who put a cloven foot up the dark lord’s ass, then this is hardly a problem. You just make the fall look good and the landing look effortless and badass. Stylish.  
  
But if you _aren’t_ … well, that poses quite a problem when you come up against the combined forces of gravity and general physics; and those forces do not fuck around.  
  
Normally, Dante did not, as a rule, bring people susceptible to that issue with him on such high-rise challenges just for the sake of a lovely view. Generally, their presence meant that they were dealing with another problem.  
  
Like the ringleaders of the infernalist cult _de jour,_ for instance.  
  
He'd seen so many of these types lately that the hunter was willing to call they were a dime a dozen these days. He was almost getting sick of them.

Botched rituals to call your dark god of choice under a night sky with a full moon have some often interesting effects… such as allowing half-formed said gods (demons, really, let’s not kid ourselves here, what ‘god’ has any interest in answering summons that include copious amounts of dubiously sourced blood and sub-par chanting?) to come into the world, usually in half and mostly flayed. Or melting. Or in forms that make little to no sense.  
  
It’s a hot mess, really.  
  
This one had them all together, weirdly enough. Dante chuckled wryly as he spun around the clumsy swipe of this demon, feeling cheated of some witty banter with the brute as the botched ritual caused the unfortunate bastard to materialize without a head. He did give kudos aplenty to the structural engineer who cooked up this particular skyscraper, thought. It was weathering just fine all the pounding, swiping and spewing of foul purulence from the weird vertical mouth opened in the demon’s flayed chest, all shark-teeth and twitching fleshy tongues. Yes, multiple. The beast hung limply out of the Gate yawning open between the two makeshift pillars erected on the roof of the building and struggled to pull itself out, malformed and clumsily controlled as it was.  
  
It was very angry, that was for sure, probably more at the fools who dared to try summon it and screwed up, depriving it of its glory, majesty and power, rather than the cheeky stripling of a hunter that was assaulting it with unnatural efficacy.  
  
One more foiled assault, one more perfect counter and once more the brute flattened itself on the concrete, trying to right itself and giving him plenty of openings to strip away more flesh clinging to the brittle bones. All he needed to do was find the core, the heart, that shriveled little center that would send that thing screaming back to the Underworld.  
  
He dared a quick glance over his shoulder to check on his partner while back-flipping out of the way of another clumsy swing.  
  
One… two… oh, wow, half-a-dozen of the ragged cultists, less man and more wretch, were already lying in neat little crumpled piles of bone and withering flesh as the ephemeral power of the Underworld abandoned yet another unworthy vessel.  
  
Dante always kind of admired that about Tess: She worked _fast._ Not like him, he stretched fights out to get the most fun he could. He talked and snarked and baited enemies, taking a twisted little pleasure in watching them screw themselves over with rookie mistakes out of sheer irritation. Tess rarely did that; in fact, her entire methodology revolved around avoiding unnecessary fights with overwhelming opponents – witches have power but their bodies are still fragile human ones. But when she had to fight, she went into them with the mentality of a predator bird: go in fast and hard and go for the goddamn jugular. Otherwise, book it like hell and live to fight another day.  
  
So many times Dante had seen that mentality catch opponents from mortals to demons by sheer surprise. Demons in particular were just unused to that kind of bald-faced approach from witches, who preferred more subversive and subtle tactics. Now, she could do subtle and subversive no problem but that took time.  
  
A fiery explosion to the face was just so much more time-saving.  
  
Between wearing the brute down to his last reserves, Dante caught sight of her felling the twisted cultists one by one, whether by fire or the end of a wicked knife. Honestly, he could watch her all day--  
  
"Fucking hell, Dante! Are you ever going to get done with that porker?!” she snapped at him, pushing a cultist away with a heel-shot to his gut. “I thought you’d get it over with since it can’t talk but you’re just teasing it like it’s a goddamn puppy!”  
  
“Aw c’mon Twig, you look like you’re having fun there! Don’t you wanna know if you can take ‘em all out before I’m done?” he chuckled back, dodging yet another swipe with aplomb.  
  
“No!” she grumbled back at him.  
  
Yeah, that was the downside to their differing tactics. Sometimes, he just kept her waiting.  
  
“Alright, alright, I’ll step it up!” he laughed as the brute, now missing most of its flesh from the bones flopped weakly over and thrashed in an unseemly manner.  
  
Honestly, he shouldn’t have been teasing her so much because by the time he was sure all it’d take was one shot, she was down to two of the pathetic but persistent cultists. They were sorry sights in their withering robes, their minds and bodies barely their own anymore. Quite resistant buggers, if she needed that long to dispatch them all. Another fell to her fire right before it could ram her and she stumbled, shoulders heaving from the intense exertions.  
  
He always forgot about that little detail of human limits – mostly because she worked so hard to make it so insignificant. But just as he wound himself up to finish off the damned demon, he looked up and saw the last cultist lift himself from his previously sprawled position on the ground and lunge at her, howling. Tess turned just fast enough to avoid the initial swing of his club-like arm but was caught in the backstroke, the limb connecting with her head to the sound of an ugly thud. Just as the blow sent her reeling, the cultist seized her by the throat with a deformed hand.  
  
Before Dante could really turn his gun that way and fire a saving shot, the cultist actually flailed wildly and screeched, flinging the limp witch away from itself… and straight over the edge of the skyscraper.  
  
Dante let out a strangled shout that sounded truly alien coming from him indeed; he made to hurtle after her, just to find his progress halted abruptly as the skeletal arm of the demon grabbed his leg.  
  
“Are you fucking kidding me?!” he blurted in surprise.  
  
He dispersed with the theatrics and drew his blade, charged with demonic power rather hastily, and brought it down on the pathetic hulk. He cleaved it in two with a tearing sound, all the way to the opened Gate which quivered and started to close. As soon as the damned thing’s grip loosened enough, Dante raced for the edge, slicing the cultist in two as he passed him.  
  
The number of floors and height of the building tumbled through his head –- he really should’ve paid more attention when Tess muttered about it on the way there -– and actually made him blanch. Precious seconds were already gone as he threw himself off the side. Normally, swan-diving off tall buildings was a sort of game.

Not today.  
  
About ten meters below him, Tess hurtled for the ground and Dante panicked slightly. When people fall from lethal heights, they tend to flail and scream an awful lot. Tess meanwhile was falling silently like a rock, back first, arms and legs limply trailing upwards by the momentum. He was pretty sure that she knew at least some spells that might slow her descent but… why wasn't she doing anything?

Unless...

The thought cleaved through his head like a spear.

 _...unless she's not conscious._  
  
Surely enough, when the wind whipped her hair away from her face he saw a splotch of red just over her eye. And the ground was coming up to meet them at such an unmerciful speed…  
  
“No, no, no, no, no–”  
  
Dante took some pride in the fact that his way of fighting demons involved a lot of telling physics how to eat it, but in reality, you can only ever break physics so much. Just streamlining his body with his arms and legs glued to his body wouldn’t work. He thought of a stupid old trick he’d used once, when he was young and dumb and messing around on a hell tower. He was close enough to the surface of the skyscraper…  
  
…so he started to run.  
  
Of course, running on aged stone and running on glass are two different animals and physics will only bend around half-demon nature so much. His feet made hard contact with the high security glass windows of the building, leaving dents and deep cracks coruscating across the glass as he fought for purchase on the smooth surface.  
  
“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!”  
  
He stretched his arm to try and catch her as he inched closer and they both approached the ground at now terminal velocity. He could count the flagstones below.  
  
He didn’t even think about it. The demonic power just enveloped him like a mantle naturally as he pushed off the side of the structure, wrapping his arms around her. Huge leathery wings spread hastily.  
  
Out of the frying pan and into the fire.  
  
He couldn’t just stop dead like that; at this speed they might both get killed. He had to lose speed slowly or risk splattering them against another building or the ground. One thing he never really enjoyed about his demonic form was how lousy a flier he was. Sure, he had power and speed but his demonic form just wasn’t built for the kind of aerial acrobatics that would’ve made this easy. He was too big and bulky and heavy and his wings weren't big enough.  
  
That… and he never bothered to practice much.  
  
They were so close to the ground when he managed to turn vertical velocity into something like horizontal flight that the first thing he collided with was a tree. He snarled and turned, taking the hit to his shoulder as he crashed through wood and leaves, feeling a thick branch actually puncture the stretched hide of his wing. Blazing hells that hurt, but he just concentrated on curling around Tess so she’d be spared from the impact. He tried to regain some control of his trajectory but between the hit and his unsuited wings, he just burst through a second tree before pinging against a nearby building and bounced off the roof of a parked car, all but crushing it. He finally plowed, on his back, through the meticulously kept grass of the promenade around the building, leaving a sizeable trench his his wake. He finally came to an abrupt stop just against a hedge.  
  
He’d had more graceful landings.  
  
Even though he was still in demonic form, his _everything_ hurt; one of his wings was even bent the wrong way. But he was frantic about Tess, still wrapped as safely as he could manage, in his arms. A light groan came from her form and she stirred. The gash on her forehead bled pretty badly and she raised her hand to wipe the blood off her eyes.  
  
“…Dante?” she whimpered.  
  
“Holy shit,” he grunted back.  
  
His voice in demon form sounded weird, doubled up and deeper with a trailing growl edge. He pushed himself to his elbows, then reached out and pushed her hair away from her face as she blinked against the harsh light of a nearby lamp-post. She winced as his claws gingerly thumbed away some hair stuck to the bloody gash on her head.  
  
“What the hell happened–-?”  
  
“He threw you off the side–-"  
  
“Oh my shit…”  
  
“Tess, I just…I just thought…”  
  
“Dante, please–-”  
  
He pulled her against him in a tight hug, just burying his face in her hair and relishing the fact that here she was, _alive_ and achy and confused rather than dead and gone! She managed to slip her arm up and around the back of his neck and squeezed him gently in response.  
  
“Fucking hell, Dante, your wing–-”  
  
“Fuck it.”  
  
“No, you just–-”  
  
“Tess I thought you were going to die. I don’t give a fuck about my whatever. I dicked around too much–-I almost got you killed.”  
  
He must’ve been making such a face because when she moved to look at him her jaw sagged and he saw such regret on her face that he almost broke down. She palmed his cheek, ignoring the wicked spikes of his jaw and her thumb traced soothing back-and-forths across his hide.  
  
“No. Never. Never, never,” she whispered. “It’s okay. You got me, didn’t you? You have my back… you always have my back. I’m so sorry babe, rookie mistake–-”  
  
How did she ever stand him? How did she ever put up with this goddamn mess of immaturity and stupid theatrics and grandstanding that he was? He almost got her killed with his stupid antics and dithering and here she was comforting _him!_ A pained sound rose form his throat, like a low whine. He couldn’t bear to look at her, just shut his eyes and tried to tell himself he needed to let her go and walk out of her life before he got her killed for real-–  
  
“Dante. Look at me.”  
  
He did as she bade and found her pressing her forehead to his. “It’s okay. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. Never going to happen.”  
  
She stared right into his inhuman eyes and said it with such conviction and ease that it was terrifying. Her eyes were soft and clear and he almost whimpered. He was so stupid. He was dangerous for her but he knew he would never have the fortitude, the will to really let her go.  
  
She probably wouldn’t let him.  
  
He almost cried when her lips sought his and she kissed him gently, as though she wasn’t kissing a demon. He surrendered to his overwhelming relief and responded, cupping her face gently in his massive paws, allowing his fingers to wind in her hair. Finally she pulled back and smiled tiredly at him.  
  
“Hey… you should calm down now. We need to go before someone sees and starts an urban legend about a demon in the park,” she said softly. “Think of all the awful nicknames you’d garner.”  
  
He cracked a small chuckle. “Yeah… I can’t even fathom.”  
  
He hugged her tight as the demonic form finally faded, almost like allowing a cramped limb to finally relax. His back was killing him, he really might need to lie down for a while after this. But at least he’d make sure she was there, sleeping it off with him. He… he needed her there, at least for tonight.


	2. A story about house warming presents

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dante brings Tess a gift for her new house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this little story follows Crossfire. It's meant to be part of an actual story about Tess getting her loft which involves Lady and Trish but I still need time to finetune it. But eh this was a tumblr prompt ("What's with the box?") and it worked out.

Tess always thought that the most tiring thing in her life would be fighting ghosts and demons, not house hunting. 

Right after she left Italy, she was more or less just with the clothes on her back until Roy managed to retrieve at least some of her near-lost personal belongings and fortune. Dante had, rather predictably, offered her to stay with him but she had gently turned him down -- frankly, after what had happened, they both needed the space and Tess really needed the privacy to recover from that ordeal. A motel wasn't ideal but it sufficed until she felt able to start house hunting. It took her months to find a decent place to live that wouldn’t cost a small fortune and even then she only got the place thanks to Lady. Leave it to her to know of a house available for a given value of 'a steal' because it was _haunted_.

 _Of course_ there was a reward attached to clearing the house out. Lady practically _sniffed out_ money, as far as Tess was concerned. At least she’d made Lady help her ‘de-ghost’ the house.

It just took a lot of startled screaming and a sledgehammer to get the job done. Fuck ghosts and fuck ghosts of _mad serial killers in particular_.

Then it took about two months to get the house in a livable state anyway. Roy, who never turned his nose up from having something to tinker with or fix, did most of the work but Tess still had to paint the walls, clean the place and then find furniture. And that wasn’t even counting all the spells she had to weave around the house for protection and misdirection and warding and concealment and… 

She liked knowing her house was _safe._

Two and a half months later, she was still living out of two boxes and had a mostly empty house but at least she had somewhere to put her feet up. She’d just lied down on her couch to rest after a long day at her job –- oh yes, the fun that was having a day job because seriously, helping out ghosts rarely pays money. 

The redhead grumbled when the doorbell rang. Roy was out getting groceries, he had a key. So who could it be? She got off the couch with a grunt, vowing to punch a bitch if this was just a dumb salesman.

It was… slightly worse.

“Oh jeez.” 

Dante sulked. “Wow, don’t be so excited to see me, Twig, you’ll hurt yourself,” he snarked.

“What are you doing here, Dante?” she sighed and stepped aside to let him in, all too aware that she was far too tired to just get him to leave.

“Whadaya mean, what am I doing here?” he huffed. “You just moved house Twig, that calls for a house-warming party."

“Oh for fuck’s sake.”

He was carrying two pizza boxes in one hand and a bag in the other which clinked gently, which told her he also brought beer. Well… at least he cared? He marched right in and Tess didn’t even question how he seemed perfectly familiar with the place even though she believed he’d only ever been there once so far. It would’ve been futile to try and prevent all this; when Dante wanted to do something, he just up and did it and she _had_ made sure her home’s wards accommodated his presence –- the last thing she needed was him giving her shit about that or even worse, him _plowing right through them_ because that’s just how stupidly potent he could be. 

Dante put his cargo down on the island counter of her kitchen. “Place looks smaller than I thought it’d be.” 

“Yes, well, it was designed with _normal sized_ people in mind, Dante,” she grumbled. “Not mutant giraffes.”

“You’re so funny,” he said with a tart smile.

“As opposed to you, who only _thinks_ he’s funny,” she chuckled. 

But all the same, she was already moving to fetch napkins and her pizza cutter, while Dante shrugged off his coat and tossed it onto her couch. She stopped at gave him a Look ™ which caused him to smirk and then gingerly remove his gun holsters too, wrap them in his coat and put it all on the sofa. 

At least he hadn’t brought the sword…

She turned around with the cutter and napkins just as Dante pulled the beer bottles and two boxes out of the bag he’d brought. One of them she suspected to be cake because it was so obviously a pastry-shop bag. She smiled. Yeah, the pizza was for his satisfaction, no doubt but he’d still thought of her. That was sweet. 

But the other box… 

“Hey Dante?” 

“What?” 

“What’s with the box?” she asked, handing him the pizza cutter. 

He pushed himself onto one of the barstool chairs around the island counter and smirked. “That’s your house-warming present, Twig.” 

_That’s slightly worrying,_ she thought. 

She did not quite trust Dante’s opinion on house decorating or gifts. She’d seen his office; sure, _she_ wasn’t aiming for household of the year award either but at least she didn’t want demon skulls pinned to her wall.

“Dante if that’s–-” 

“It’s _not_ any part of any demon, I promise,” he chuckled. “Jeez, Twig, what do you take me for?”

She gave him another Look ™. 

“Don’t answer that,” he hastily added. Then he nudged the box closer to her. It was plain cardboard but he’d made an effort to wrap it in a red ribbon and into a passable bow. “Just open it.” 

She quirked an eyebrow and hopped onto her seat, then drew it before her. She tugged the ribbon loose and then opened the top. She peeked inside hesitantly and after a moment of confusion, started chuckling. 

“Oh wow.” 

He grinned with satisfaction and picked up a slice of pizza, bracing his elbows on the counter.

She reached into the box gingerly and lifted out a small cactus. The pot was big enough to fit in both her hands and was wrapped in a bright red paper with a smaller bow. The cactus itself… was one of the ugliest things she’d ever seen in her life. It was close to spherical with weird bumps here and there and textured almost identically to a brain, growing in weird, tightly coiled ‘squiggly’ lumps with odd grooves. It was covered in a fine fuzz and had a strange, green-gray color.

“What is this?” she giggled.

“A cactus. I wanted to get you something with a flower but this thing apparently lives longer,” he said. 

She got the impression he wanted to add something to that but he instead just bit down on his pizza.

She hugged the potted cactus one armed and brought her hand to her face, still laughing. “Oh man, Dante, it’s the _ugliest_ plant I have seen in my entire life. And I love it! It’s adorable!”

He grinned widely. 

She put the potted cactus down on the counter beside them and picked up a pizza slice. Her tiredness seemed to have evaporated a bit. “It’s like my very own zombie-fied little brain. I’m going to call it Fred.” 

“Put a bowtie around the pot,” he snorted. 

“I just might!” 

Then she stood on the rung of her barstool, reached over the counter and pecked his cheek. “This was the best housewarming present. Thank you.”

“So I can come by and say hi to Fred anytime, right?” he quipped. 

“Don’t push your luck, mister!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just in case you're interested, the cactus is a Mammillaria Elongata Monstrosus (Cristata cultivar), literally called the Brain Cactus.


	3. A story under the stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Short and sweet. Again a request from tumblr. A request for Dante/Tess (or Dantess) fluff to soothe someone's aching heart.

“But then Nero started to complain–-” she chuckled. 

He shook his head. “Nero doesn’t do much else.”

“-–about how it was all going so slow and whining about where the action was.” 

“Told ya.”

“I _almost_ felt bad when I started laughing after that demon showed up and retched gunk all over him.” 

“I wish I’d been there to see that, Twig.”

Dante grunted slightly as he hefted the heavy rolled carpet out through the narrow little door to her roof. She followed, carrying an armful of couch pillow-seats, pillows and a large basket full of goodies. The huge silver disk of the moon overhead was so bright, it made the blackout that sunk the whole city into darkness almost forgettable. Around them, for a rare short while, the city was quiet and dark on a mid-summer night. They could even overlook how this had been a demon's fault, lurking at the power station and how taking it out had caused such a feedback that the entire grid was knocked out. it was such a nice night that it hardly mattered. The absence of the ambient city lights revealed countless stars that normally shied away from the lights.

“Oh, I don’t know. He was so screaming mad, he might’ve just punched you clean out of the building,” she chuckled. 

Dante spread the carpet out over the concrete surface of the roof with a somewhat theatrical flourish. It looked so fluffy and inviting that it was hard to believe she'd found it at a yard sale. Tess dumped the pillows on it. They toed off their shoes and got comfortable. Dante grunted in relief as he stretched his long legs over the soft carpet.

“Wow, it really is crystal clear tonight. Not a cloud anywhere and the moon looks bigger than your nose,” she chirped. 

“Har-har, you’re so funny,” he scoffed. 

“I still can’t believe you talked me into this.” 

Dante smirked. “Like I said, Twig, it’s a dreamy night.” Then he reached over to peer into the basket. “So what goods have we got?”

Tess drew herself by the basket with her legs tucked under her thighs and started to dig things out of it. The first thing extracted was a small battery powered radio that they tuned to a late-night show; a host with a voice 'like butterscotch' and a penchant for playing the kind of mellow rock tunes the mood of the night called for. Then they dug through the basket. 

“Hmm… well there’s a cheese dip and those breadsticks I made on a whim…" Tess mused, withdrawing a covered bowl and the wrapped baked goods, then a small bag. "Half a bag of peanut M&Ms…” 

“You and your sweet tooth,” Dante chuckled. “Where’d the wine come from?” he added and plucked out a bottle.

“Oh Roy got that when he bought more of that Spanish tangerine liqueur he likes.” 

Dante rummaged through the rest of the contents. “Hmm, a quarter of Hate Cake, strawberries. And pizza, garlic bread and fries. I think we’re well-stocked.” 

“Yes, god forbid we ever go without pizza,” Tess chortled as they dug things out of the basket.

Dante sat up and grabbed the wine bottle. It felt heavy in his hand and he found the bottle opener he’d thrown into the basket when they were assembling their impromptu picnic. He tore the seal off with his teeth, then wedged the opener into the cork and twisted a few times. Then he pulled back with a soft grunt. The cork surrendered with a cheerful POP! Dante brought the cork to his nose and sniffed then smiled. 

“Oh like you know the first thing about wines,” Tess said and swiped the bottle from him. 

“I know when I smell something tasty,” he protested and tossed the cork and opener into the basket. He wagged his eyebrows at her and hooted at her chortle and cringe. She smelled the bottle opening and giggled then took a big swig that made Dante burst out laughing. 

“Hey, hey ease up, Twig!! I didn’t bring you up here to get you drunk!” he said and swiped it back. 

“Yeah you did, you’re that cliche and cheesy,” she countered and grabbed a breadstick, swiped it through the cheese dip and snapped off the tasty end. “I need to be drunk half the time to put up with your shit. Might as well be on some good French Bordeaux.”

“You wound me,” he deadpanned and took a big swig of the wine. He then stared at the label. “Damn, this _is_ good stuff. Bit of a kick, but nice.”

“Roy’s so full of shit when he says he doesn’t really care about food,” she winged as he passed the bottle back to her and attacked the pizza box. “He sure as hell cares about his booze.”

“Sometimes I swear he’s just fucking with all of us,” Dante agreed and bit down on a slice of pizza. He let a satisfied chuckle with his mouth full as the cheese oozed and stretched.

“Of course he is,” Tess chuckled and flopped back on the pillows, starting on some garlic bread. “You know, he’s still a little mad at you about Amaro.” 

“Whatever, we’ve all been over that a hundred times,” Dante groused and polished off the slice, then grabbed a whole piece of garlic bread. “When he stops playing coy, we’ll have a big ol’ throwdown and we’ll be right as rain.” 

Tess reached for a slice. “The last time you said that, Lady and Trish started laying bets.”

Dante threw his head back and laughed. “Of course they would! You wave some money around and Lady comes running! She’s like a bloodhound about money! And _Trish_!” 

“Are you suggesting that Lady is teaching Trish bad habits?” Tess giggled. 

“I’m not suggesting anything! Trish hardly needs the encouragement,” Dante scoffed. He chomped the garlic bread slice down. “She has enough bad habits on her own. Who are _you_ betting on, Twig?” 

She was busy with some fries. “Nobody, I’m the bank.”

Dante scoffed and shook his head. They nattered on about the blackout, the night sky and munched their way through most of the food. The first wine bottle was finished and Tess went back downstairs to fetch a second one. By the time the strawberries made their appearance they were both a little tipsy and in a comfortable pile against the pillows. Dante had piled a lot of them under his back and reclined, allowing Tess to use his thighs as a pillow. 

“Ok. Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Vincent Price,” Dante chuckled, throwing a strawberry to his mouth. 

“ _Gwaaah_ , that’s unfair. You just picked my favorite horror icons!” Tess whined and crunched on some M&Ms. 

Dante tutted at her. “Hey, you made me choose among my favorite Hollywood leading ladies. Tit for tat. Now go on: Kill, Marry, Fuck.”

“Hmmm…” 

She pondered for a few moments, snatching a strawberry from his hand in the meantime. “Okay. Fuck Christopher Lee because, well, look at him _._ He was a regal bastard. Plus I doubt either of us could _actually_ kill him if we tried.” 

Dante cackled and then delicately nipped a strawberry she held up to him straight from her hand.

“Marry Vincent Price because _look at him._ Holy shit. That gaze. That jaw. _Mmhmm_. And he was a gourmet cook! He wrote a cook book! I’ve got a copy downstairs and it’s so good!” 

Dante laughed harder. “Is that a subtle hint that I should get in the kitchen more, Twig? And why would you kill poor Cushing?” 

“Because I can and because he was Moff Tarkin and fuck Tarkin,” she said flatly and he hooted. “And goodness. You in the kitchen. Maybe if I want said kitchen remodeled.” 

“That’s harsh, Twig.”

“The truth hurts, Dante,” she said wickedly and fed him another strawberry.

He held it between his teeth. “Not more than your sass does,” he countered and craned his neck down. 

“Bullshit, you love my sass,” she said. “I have it on the highest authority that you get bored if I’m not there to knock your ego around.”

“Guilty as charged. And Nero needs to learn to keep his mouth shut.”

She snickered and reaching up, bit half of the fruit. They chuckled all the way through the kiss because they were half drunk and because the strawberry was too big and juicy for one bite.

“But fuck Christopher Lee? _Really?_ Should I get a Dracula cloak and skulk into your room at night?” he chimed when they pulled back. 

Tess rolled into the pillows, laughing up at the sky.


End file.
